It's a holiday for most of us in the U.S., but for me it's the first day of fall term classes. It's been a wonderful and fairly productive summer, but I'm excited about the ethics class I have planned.
I'm trying a course blog this year: http://bristerethics.edublogs.org/
I've come to a point where I can't imagine that students would be satisfied with only paper copies of syllabi and assignments. And the online course support that RIT uses (MyCourses), besides being private, has a clunky and ugly interface that requires multiple page loads just to give out links. I hope that blogging will provide a better forum for student discussions (via comments) and for generating excitement.
(Thanks to Brandon Watson for encouragement!)
********
I'm not teaching Plato this year, but I agree with Schwitzsplinters, who notes that the Dialogues are not much in the way of give-and-take. They model a mode of learning but not progressive inquiry and discovery; dialogue is still an underexploited genre.
Glad to be of service. You'll have to let us know at the end what you think of this particular use of blogging.
ReplyDelete